Court scraps Dutch government's traffic fine hikes in 2024 and 2025 for being unfair
The Dutch government should not have increased traffic fines in 2024 and 2025, an Utrecht subdistrict court ruled on Friday. The increase was unfair and disproportionate, creating an imbalance between traffic fines and penalties for other criminal offenses, the judge said. The verdict noted that increasing traffic fines to fill gaps in the government budget is little more than a tax disguised as a fine on traffic infractions, which is not permissible under Dutch law.
In 2024, the government increased traffic fines by 10 percent, partly due to inflation and partly to balance the Ministry of Justice and Security’s budget. In 2025, fines again rose with inflation, an increase of about 3.2 percent.
The subdistrict court pointed out that in 2023, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) warned that traffic fines were rising twice as fast as fines for other criminal offenses. As a result, they were no longer proportionate to the severity of the offense. The OM cited as an example that the penalty for a simple assault was 400 euros, while the fine for parking in a space reserved for people with disabilities was 440 euros.
After the OM’s warning, the Council of State also advised the government not to increase traffic fines because the imbalance with fines for criminal offenses may affect Dutch citizens’ trust in the system and willingness to pay fines. The OM is organized under the Ministry of Justice and Security.
The government decided to ignore the advice and hiked traffic fines, partly to avoid having to make cuts to the police or youth care, for example. According to the subdistrict court, that constitutes a disguised tax on traffic offenders, and that is not allowed.
“The interest of the national budget cannot be an argument for increasing fines. If that were the case, fines could be increased without limit to plug holes in the budget,” the court said. “While the government does have the freedom to make political and administrative choices, that freedom is limited by legal rules.”
“Therefore, in two rulings, the court judges that the increases in traffic fines in 2024 and 2025 were unreasonable,” the court said.
Last year, traffic fines generated about 1 billion euros for the state treasury. That amount will be a few tens of millions of euros higher this year due to an inflation adjustment. The government has already announced that fines will rise again next year.
